Saturday, August 20, 2011

Dingbat mendacity

In normal times, I like to watch MSNBC, FOX and CNN news, hopefully to get a balanced view of current events.I find I can no longer watch FOX, because I can’t stand the distortions, false innuendos and outright lies they promulgate.

In the past week, I have been told about a vast conspiracy concerning President Obama’s birthplace;I have heard sly references to the “death squads” who are going to call Grandma and Grandpa in for a conference to determine if they will be allowed to live any longer;the pundits have discussed Obama’s wars; the so-called historians have pontificated about the failure of Obama’s TARP program; and they are crying great crocodile tears all about how the Administration has brought us to financial ruin.

Do you suppose the dingbats are really that stupid?Can they not read?Have they not been paying attention for the past 7-8 years?Yet they say these things with great sincerity, as if that will somehow make it true.Think about it!The “birther” and “deather” conspiracies were disproved a long time back.The wars were started under the previous administration.The first TARP program will before the last Presidential Election.The present financial crisis originated 5-6 years ago because some major financial institutions did some really stupid things.

We hear a constant bleating of the dingbat’s mantras: you know, No more taxes; smaller government; reduction of expenditures; change the Constitution; and so forth.These might all be fine sentiments, but no one has bothered to explain exactly how we are supposed to do this.It’s as if we are just supposed to vote for any dingbats, and all these things will just miraculously happen.Sorry but neither life nor government works that way.

This all reminds me of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.There, the ruling pigs had to come up with something simple the sheep could remember and repeat, over and over.In that case, it was “four legs good, two legs bad.”For the current crop of dingbats, I would propose: “Ideology over Reality” except I doubt many of them would understand it. Too many seem to suffer from a bad case of “facto prohibito”which loosely translates as “don’t confuse me with facts.”